Call it kismet. Naomi Aragon of Normal Heights was at a coffee shop a few months ago wondering how she could learn to cultivate marijuana when she noticed a business card on the wall that promised to make her life easy. A San Diego startup called Green Carpet Growing was offering to visit people’s...

Following the success of an early-stage trial of its drug for Huntington’s disease, Ionis Pharmaceuticals has earned a $45 million license fee from Roche, its commercial partner. Roche now assumes the lead in developing the drug, Ionis-HTTRx, Carlsbad-based Ionis said Monday. If successful, it...

Dart NeuroScience, a developer of drugs to improve memory, is closing its operations in San Diego and permanently laying off about 265 employees, according to a notice filed with the state. Operations will close on Feb. 9, said the notice signed by Kenneth E. Johns Jr., Dart’s CEO and chairman....

Three physician-scientists, including a top San Diego-based Alzheimer's researcher, will get up to $70 million to accelerate clinical trials to find new treatments, under a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Paul Aisen, of the University of Southern California but based in San Diego,...

San Diego's Halozyme Therapeutics will get $40 million upfront, with the potential for much more, under a partnership announced Thursday with Alexion Pharmaceuticals of New Haven, Conn. Under the collaboration, Alexion can use Halozyme’s subcutaneous drug technology to formulate drugs for injection...

SDG&E turned off the power to about 1,350 customers in eight areas in East County and North County on Wednesday night to protect the power grid and minimize the risk of wildfires as a Santa Ana wind storm picked up speed. The Sill Hill weather station near Descanso measured wind gusts up to 75...

A series of small earthquakes broke Wednesday and early Thursday about eight miles northeast of Julian, causing shaking that was felt across a wide area of the county, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The shaking began at 4:33 p.m. on Wednesday when a 4.0 quake occurred nearly 10 miles beneath...

Metacrine, a San Diego biotech developing drugs for metabolic diseases, said it has raised $22 million from venture capital investors. The financing will help privately held Metacrine advance its program to treat liver diseases, the company said. It is developing a drug now called MET409 for potential...

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Salk Institute scientists say they have developed a safer method of a popular gene editing technology. In a study released Thursday, they demonstrate it reverses illnesses in mice, including diabetes, muscular dystrophy and kidney disease. With further development, the modified technology, known...

It’s not a ghost town. But visitors to San Diego City College might find themselves asking: Shouldn’t there be a lot more students? The century-old college has been going through a $460 million expansion and makeover that’s meant to send enrollment soaring to 25,000 from 17,000, and raise the visibility...

Roberto Padovani, a former Qualcomm executive who helped the chipmaker place the Internet on mobile devices, has donated $1 million to UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering. Padovani and his wife Colleen gave the money to endow scholarships in Jacobs’ of electrical and computer engineering...

California's stem cell agency has granted more than $8.7 million to San Diego scientists for research on cancer and other diseases. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine made these and other grants totaling more than $16 million at its meeting last week. The two biggest local grants...

San Diego County will be under a red flag warning from early Monday through Thursday afternoon due to Santa Ana winds and very low humidity, the National Weather Service says. Forecasters say the dry, offshore winds will pick up speed Monday into Tuesday. The winds are expected to gust 35 to 50...

Science

Fitch Ratings of New York expressed concern and confidence Friday about the credit worthiness of La Jolla’s Scripps Research Institute, which has struggled to compete for funding from the National Institutes of Health. The credit agency downgraded Scripps Research’s rating on $46 million of debt...

The University of San Diego has received a $20 million donation to greatly expand its School of Business, which has become so popular the campus has had to spread classes across numerous buildings. The gift was made by Don Knauss, who joined the university’s board of trustees in 2008, while he...

The FDA cried fraud in October, accusing companies in Florida, Colorado and California of illegally selling marijuana-derived products that supposedly could prevent, treat or cure cancer. The advertising claims were unsubstantiated, said the FDA, and the products hadn’t been submitted for approval....

Will you be having a bit of marijuana with your bacon? Or a pinch of it in your coffee? Or a dab in the syrup you’ll pour on your pancakes? The choice is yours. To the joy and alarm of many, cannabis is being infused in virtually every type of food and drink, from ravioli and BBQ to juices and...

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla has waved off a possible opportunity to become president of Carnegie Mellon University, an elite private school in Pittsburgh that specializes in science and engineering. Carnegie Mellon has been operating with an interim leader since late June when President...

Qualcomm co-founder Franklin Antonio is giving UC San Diego $30 million to expand the university’s huge engineering school, which provides the company with a lot of the talent it needs to compete in the global chipmaking industry. The donation will help underwrite a $180 million research complex...

The Union-Tribune recently published a long story that explained what will happen on January 1st when the public can begin to buy recreational marijuana in licensed stores in San Diego. The story generated a lot of questions from readers. We sought answers from Katherine McBroom, a partner at Kaedian,...

San Diego County’s only licensed commercial marijuana grower plans to at least double production, largely to help meet demand when stores begin selling recreational cannabis in early January. OutCo, which operates in an unincorporated area near El Cajon, says that it is on pace to produce about...

UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography plans to build a huge flume that will have an unmatched ability to simulate the interaction of the ocean’s surface and the atmosphere. The $4 million machine will replace a decades-old flume that helped Scripps to greatly expand scientist’s understanding...

Just like humans of a certain age, gorillas who live long enough start experiencing health issues. So when 45-year-old Winston began showing lethargy and decreased appetite, it was a cause for concern at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. As the oldest breeding male gorilla in the United States, and...

A daring and high-risk plan to prevent the extinction of Mexico’s vaquita porpoise by capturing the animals and holding them under human care has been suspended following the death of an adult female last weekend. “We knew from the beginning that this was one of the risks,” said Lorenzo Rojas Bracho,...

A year after California voters legalized recreational marijuana, cities from San Diego to Eureka are about to find out whether consumers will flock to licensed stores to buy it. The state and many cities are hustling to write and issue the permits that retailers would need to begin selling cannabis...

In a first of its kind, West African dwarf crocodiles began hatching Monday at the San Diego Zoo’s Reptile House. Out of 20 eggs, three hatched by themselves Monday morning, and zoo staff assisted a fourth that was having trouble hatching. The mother is Yendi, an 11-year-old female, and the father...

The cash-only marijuana industry needs help safely transferring taxes to the state, and may get it from the California Treasurer’s Office in the form of armored couriers who would pick up payments. State Treasurer John Chiang is exploring the idea as a way to assist the industry, which will greatly...

UC San Diego’s highest ranking health and medicine executive has lost out in his bid to become the next president of the University of New Mexico. David Brenner, vice chancellor of UC San Diego Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine, had been one of five finalists for the job. The position...

Is free speech being placed at risk on college campuses by demonstrators who try to shut down controversial speakers? The question will get a public airing Wednesday at UC San Diego, which recently experienced a violent free speech incident. First Amendment expert Thomas Healy will talk about the...

The FDA has warned the public to beware of fraudulent advertising that promises that certain marijuana-derived products can be used to prevent, diagnose, treat and cure cancer. The agency issued the alert by announcing that it had sent warning letters to four companies who were illegally selling...

CAMPUS LIFE Young people love short videos, and UC San Diego is producing lots of them to help economics students learn difficult concepts. The econ department has created a “video handbook” containing more than 200 lectures that focus on some of the hardest aspects of microeconomics. The videos...

For the fifth straight year, UC San Diego is reporting record fall enrollment, hitting 36,624, which is about 200 more students than school officials estimated the campus would have this year. The university’s enrollment has grown by more than 7,500 in the past five years, and is expected to reach...

Snapping the reigns of a chestnut horse, Albert Lin galloped across the broad plains of Mongolia, unleashing the exuberance he felt searching for the tomb of Genghis Khan, the notorious 13th century conqueror. It was 2009 and the UC San Diego scientist was about to experience a bit of fame. The...

The Zika virus is transmitted from a mother to her fetus by infected cells that will later develop into the brain's first and primary form of defense against germs, scientists at the UC San Diego School of Medicine reported Friday. The discovery could open a pathway for a potential treatment for...

A compelling question came up Friday at UC San Diego, where engineers are discussing the near future of driverless cars: Will the public accept driverless cars if their operating systems don’t match the driving skills of a human? The question was fielded by Xiaodi Hou is correct spelling, chief...

UC San Diego is creating an outdoor site where it can test fly unmanned aerial vehicles, which are rapidly coming into common use by everyone from police investigating crime scenes to scientists looking for archaeological remains. The aerodrome will be a net cage that will be 30 feet high and roughly...

UC San Diego has begun looking for effective ways to talk to the public about how marijuana can impair a person’s driving abilities, a move prompted by the legalization of recreational marijuana in California. Researchers will initially develop talking points for law enforcement and physicians,...

Science

The average monthly temperature at San Diego International Airport is running roughly four degrees above average due to the two heat waves that have baked the region this month. Through late Tuesday, the airport’s average monthly temperature was 71.2 degrees, or 3.9 degrees above average. That...

Matt Moreland, a meteorologist who has helped forecast hurricanes in such hot spots as New Orleans, Houston and the Florida Keys, has been named meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service office in San Diego. Moreland, 43, has just arrived from the NWS office in Key West, where he...

The writing’s on the chalkboard: The San Diego Board of Education has asked high schools and middle schools to consider delaying first period by an hour.Science shows that the adolescent brain isn’t fully awake and ready to learn until nearly noon.Schools that have made this switch report better...

A magnitude 3.9 earthquake struck at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday 10 miles from the northwest tip of San Clemente Island, causing shaking that was only sparsely felt on shore, the US Geological Survey said. Seismologists said the temblor happened 3.1 miles beneath the seafloor, at the edge of the San Clemente...

Alzheimer’s disease used to be thought of as something you either have or you don’t. If you have it, your mind is already deteriorating, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But in recent years that clear-cut definition has gotten more fuzzy. Doctors think more in terms of risk factors for...

A preliminary study of ovarian cancer finds that in most cases it actually arises in the Fallopian tubes. If confirmed, the study could give rise to advances in treating this difficult cancer. “We may have been making incorrect assumptions about it for many decades,” said study leader Dr. Victor...

The Orionids meteor shower will reach its peak before dawn on Saturday and Sunday when tiny remnants from Halley’s Comet burn up when they strike Earth’s upper atmosphere. Astronomers say that the best time to look for the meteors is around 2 a.m. on each of those days. But the meteors should...

In a fresh example of its ongoing need for money, the Salk Institute in La Jolla is asking the public to donate $313,840 to help buy a seed-planting robot that could help in expanding food supplies. The institute is making the appeal online, in the kind of crowdfunding solicitation that’s becoming...

San Diego County can expect winter weather that’s drier and warmer than average, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday in an outlook that raises the possibility of increased wildfire activity. Forecasters said there is a better than even chance that a La Nina will develop in the equatorial...

Hope? Reality? Hype? Consumers are understandably confused by the near-future of driverless cars. The major automakers claim that true autonomy is drawing near. But what does that even mean? The question will get a hard look Friday at UC San Diego, when top roboticists from around the world meet...

A gene therapy treatment for some hard-to-treat lymphomas was approved Wednesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The approval for Yescarta is the second in two months for this kind of gene therapy, which uses CAR T cells to attack cancer. Yescarta, generically called axicabtagene ciloleucel,...

The public is invited to attend Saturday’s christening of the Hershel “Woody” Williams, a Navy logistics ship that’s being built at General Dynamics-NASSCO’s shipyard on San Diego Bay. The 784-foot long vessel will be christened during a ceremony that will start at 10 a.m. The gates will open to...

The La Jolla Shores boardwalk was renamed “Walter Munk Way” on Wednesday to honor a researcher whose work helped make UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography a mecca for science. “I am very pleased about this because it connects the community to Scripps, where I’ve been since 1939,”...

Hearing-impaired people can understand conversation significantly better in a noisy environment by playing a brain-training exercise, according to a study published Thursday. People recognized 25 percent more words presented to them after completing the exercise. It simulated the task of understanding...

For the second straight day, a small earthquake struck near Julian, causing shaking that was felt in Alpine, Valley Center, Lakeside, Ramona, Ranchita and Santa Ysabel, the US Geological Survey said. The latest event was a 3.4 temblor that occurred at 3:06 a.m. Wednesday, five miles northwest of...